Daphne Gray-Grant is
former features editor at a major metropolitan daily newspaper,
Daphne Gray-Grant is a writer, editor and writing coach.Follow HereFor Her
Website where you can sign up for her free weekly newsletter or buy
her popular book, 8 1/2 Steps to Writing Faster.

By Daphne Gray-Grant

Published on February 6, 2012

People
frequently ask me how many times they
should rewrite. I try to dodge this question because, in truth, there
is no easy answer. Pieces of writing are like snowflakes; each is
unique. There are, however, some questions you can ask yourself for
guidance

How
many drafts should you write? (Hint: once is not enough)

I've
never been a big fan of the mystery or crime thriller genre, apart
from when I was pregnant with triplets. Consigned to bed-rest, I took
to my chamber with Vikram Seth's literary novel A
Suitable Boy -- all
1,488 pages of it.

When
I was free again (a relative term, as I then had three babes in
arms), I hadn't even cracked the considerable spine of the Seth book.
But I had devoured the entire oeuvre
of mystery-meisters
Jonathan and Faye Kellerman. I attribute it to the hormones and
haven't read a mystery since.

Perhaps
this is why I'd never heard of James Patterson.
Judging by his ranking on Amazon -- generally somewhere between 3.5
and four stars -- the author of The
Women's Murder Club
series is a competent writer who knows how to produce a page-turner.

He's
even received the ultimate compliment from prime-time TV and been
featured on The
Simpsons. (The episode
reportedly showed Marge reading one of his books on the beach.
"Ooooo, I love James Patterson," she exclaimed. "It's
amazing how he always manages to solve the crime just as you're
getting to the end of the book.")

My
Saturday newspaper recently featured an interview with Patterson in
which he discussed his writing methods. He
begins his writing day at 5 a.m. and works for several hours. "I
write every day, weekends too, first early in the morning, and then
in the afternoon, maybe 2 to 6," he told the interviewer. But
for me his most interesting comments related to rewriting. After the
first draft, he said, he rewrites a minimum
of two to seven more
times.

People
frequently ask me how many times they
should rewrite. I try to dodge this question because, in truth, there
is no easy answer. Pieces of writing are like snowflakes; each is
unique. There are, however, some questions you can ask yourself for
guidance:

1)
Have you allowed a minimum of a day to pass before you start editing
something you’ve written?
Self-editing requires tincture of time. If you want to judge how much
rewriting your work requires, you need some distance from it. Take a
break.

2)
Can you describe your audience and your purpose in a single sentence?
To determine if your
piece has "worked" you need to know who
you are writing for and why.
In this piece, for example, my audience is readers of the Book
Pleasures website. My main purpose is to convince you that rewriting,
more than once,
is necessary.

3)
Does your [non-fiction] writing include real-life examples?
No one wants to read just theory. People want to read about people --
or about stuff that's really happened. This rule applies to every
type of writing, except, perhaps (sigh) academic work.

4)
Have you read your work out loud?
Yes, you may look goofy. And, yes, whispering is permitted. But you
may not skip this step. It's crucial for determining whether your
piece really "hangs together" -- and for spotting and
fixing the rough bits.

5)
Have you run your writing through a readability check?
There is a readability feature built into MS Word
(Tools/Options/Spelling & grammar/Show readability statistics)
that will help you identify ways to make your writing easier to read.
If you’re not familiar with it, consult your Help menu or Google to
find out how it works.

Yes,
rewriting can be boring and tiresome. But if James Patterson is
willing to rewrite each of his (estimated) 90,000-word novels two
to seven times, surely
your short article or report deserves a little more attention, too.